If you believe the movies, the only acts of kindness you'll ever encounter will be at the hands of people too dumb to use those hands as anything more complicated than big fleshy spoons.
The cliche of "dumb people nice, smart people mean" is so firmly embedded in our cinematic bedrock it's swapping war stories with the sentient bones of allosauruses. Just one more sign all these fancy Harvard screenwriters have never spent any time working retail or customer service, where the dimwitted are less likely to touch your heart than to burn down your counter when you tell them the price of stamps has risen two cents.
Not that smart people are any kinder. Crack wise about a surgeon's tie and he will leave a sponge inside your brain. Still, it's the worst kind of cliche because it isn't even true. Count it as a small compliment, then, that Dinner for Schmucks kinda-sorta makes it work.
Paul Rudd is desperate for a promotion at his investment firm. To get it, he'll have to impress his bosses over their monthly dinner a dinner where they're expected to bring the biggest idiots they can find.
Rudd's girlfriend Stephanie Szostak is appalled that he'd attend, but when Rudd runs into Steve Carell, a blithering IRS employee who makes dioramas out of dead mice, he figures he's got dinner in the bag. Carell's a walking disaster, though, and soon Rudd's job and his relationship are up in the air.
Dinner for Schmucks is based on a French comedy, a genre I know nothing about but imagine is filled with German men in dresses. Hollywood does seem kind of creatively bankrupt right now, but I've got no beef with this adaptation. Let's face it, the chances any of us were actually going to watch a French comedy were roughly equivalent to me finding something other than moths when I open my wallet.
No matter, all a comedy has to do is be funny. A comedy could sell your complete collection of Pokemon cards (you know you have them) for spoiled meat which it then leaves under your bed and you'd still forgive it if it were funny enough.
Dinner for Schmucks couldn't justify a crime like that, but it's got enough laughs to get away with, say, never doing the dishes. Carell's great as a fountain of terrible ideas, and Zach Galifianakis and Jemaine Clement come through in supporting roles.
Much of it doesn't connect. Rudd's overexaggerated crazed stalker plays more like a scene from director Jay Roach's other work (Meet the Fockers, Austin Powers in Goldmember). The plot's quite the shambler, too, although writers David Guion and Michael Handelman do some tight and inventive joke writing before delving into the necessary sentiment.
Carell's performance and the writing about his ex-wife are too good for that sentiment to be cheap, but it's certainly inexpensive. If movies' emotional content were engagement rings, and you gave Dinner for Schmucks to your girlfriend, her smile would not reach her eyes. Then she would stare just a second too long at the waiter who looks a little like Ashton Kutcher.
Yet the dinner is outright hilarious, and while it may take its sweet time getting there, the journey is fairly funny and rarely annoying. It could stand to be a few minutes shorter in many ways, this feels like a poor man's Judd Apatow movie but I enjoyed myself enough to give it a pass.
Grade: B-
